British actor Benedict Cumberbatch is set to use the skills he learned playing super-sleuth Sherlock Holmes to guest-direct a science festival in the U.K.

The star, who plays the title character in hit British Tv drama Sherlock, has signed up to oversee the upcoming Cambridge Science Festival in England, and will even appear in a mock crime scene in tribute to his crime-fighting character.

Cumberbatch reveals acting sparked his own personal interest in science after having played some of the most brilliant real life thinkers, including physicists Werner Heisenberg and Stephen Hawking, and botanist Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker.

He tells Britain's Radio Times magazine, "My link to a science festival may seem a little tenuous at first glance, and yet as an actor who has researched playing Stephen Hawking, Joseph Hooker, Heisenberg and both Frankenstein and his creation I've long had a passion for all fields of science.

"Science and our engagement with it has reached a crucial crossroads. (The festival is) a hugely important bridge between the public and science. We hope the programme entertains and inspires you to take a deeper look at our extraordinary world and our existence in it and the universe."